Makers: Andrea Holmes and Edith Curwood

Panel number: 105

Petition Sheet Number: 108

Person honouring: Maggie Dickson

Relationship to makers: None

Margaret Gordon Burn (nee Huie) was born on 22 March 1825, at Edinburgh, Scotland, the eldest child of Eliza Gordon Edgar and Alexander Huie, an accountant. She worked as a governess in Liverpool until her father died in 1852. Her family then immigrated to Geelong, Australia where Margaret opened a small private school.

In 1857 she married Andrew Burn, a teacher. In 1864 he suffered severe sunstroke from which he never fully recovered, although he lived until 1892. To support herself and her young children (Ann McLeod, Edgar Huie and David William Murray), Margaret opened Geelong Ladies’ College. 

In 1870 she was selected as lady principal of the Girls’ Provincial School (later Otago Girls’ High School) in Dunedin. She and her children arrived at Port Chalmers on the Gothenburg on 27 December 1870. Slim, erect and of medium height, her prim manner covering great kindness, Margaret Burn was strict but scrupulously fair. 

She was a staunch Presbyterian, with prayers a regular part of the school day. In 1884 Margaret retired, but in 1887 she became lady principal of the new Waitaki Girls’ High School in Oamaru until 1892. Retiring to Dunedin, she taught French and English privately.  

She signed the Petition, M Gordon Burn, Hart St Roslyn. Her daughter Annie McLeod Allan and her sister, Elizabeth Borrows, also signed. Margaret lived with family and helped raise her son Edgar’s children after the death of his wife in 1904. She died at Dunedin on 8 December 1918.

Panel materials: French linen panelling, old lace and linen. Toile fabric donated by a friend’s daughter from a bundle given to her on her 21st. All old fabric.